Zutara Week
by Scarlet Elixir
Summary: Zutara Week 2010 drabbles. Day 1: Family, Day 2: Change, Day 3: Pain, Day 4: Date, Day 5: Harmony, Day 6: Alternate Universe, Day 7: Storm
1. Chapter 1: Family

Day 1: Family

I just discovered today that I missed out on Zutara Week a couple weeks ago, so I wanted to make up my contributions now! This is the first, and I'll be posting the rest over the next week in my usual late-for-everything fashion. Happy belated Zutara Week, ya'll!

Oh and also I've never done entries for Zutara Week before so take it easy on me, okay? Unless, of course, I've made a grammatical error, in which case, call that sucker out like you're calling out sick from work.

I like Avatar but I never have time for it anymore... Not that I haven't seen every episode, because I have but I never really have time for TV anymore... Except this morning. This morning I watched an episode of Psych. Oh, and I don't own a thing, either. Which is sad, really.

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"Alright, who wants to get hitched tonight?"

One of the young men following a step behind her smirked at her choice of words and the other shot his hand up instantly in the air. "I dibs not marrying Katara!" he called.

The young woman in question cocked an eyebrow back at him.

"What?" He shrugged. "Sorry but you took up the whole bed last night. I had no room."

Toph grinned expectantly.

The boy next to her noticed and leaned in to whisper, "I don't think he meant it that way." But he was smiling too. He and Toph had a similar sense of humor, and Katara could be touchy when it came to her size or appearance. He couldn't help but laugh sometimes when the boys talked themselves onto Katara's bad side, which wasn't hard to do.

The harmless comment hadn't slipped by unnoticed. "Fine then, get your beard out. You're sleep on the floor tonight," the woman said in a snappy tone.

"What?" Her brother looked at her, confused. "My wha-? Oh, but why?"

"I think we're going to have to be staying here a few nights and we need to save money." She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Unless of course you want to kick your lovely daughter or son out of bed."

Sokka looked back at the two teens in question, who were trailing behind now, deep in conversation. "That's not fair, you know I wouldn't..."

"Okay," she cut him off, preoccupied with her own thoughts of playing pretend. "So you're they're Uncle, wait no, you're they're father. I'll be their Aunt, your sister, obviously, and then Zuko will be my..."

She turned to look at him as she said his name and as she did, her glance fell on a sign on the large door they were passing.

"Oh," she remarked, and stopped abruptly, causing her brother to nearly crash into her and his comrade her to bump up against her, catching himself.

His lips brushed against her ear as she was half-turned toward him and he murmured a quick "sorry" before taking half a step back.

Katara heard Toph add a quiet "and they say _I'm_ the blind one" with a smile before she explained herself:

"This is it, we're here."

"Great, I'm pooped" said Aang.

"We'll get the rooms in a second," Zuko said. "This is your Dad for the next few days, by the way." He nodded at Sokka who was putting the finishing touches on the beard he carried for such an occasion.

Sokka gave the beard an experimental wiggle before Zuko stepped inside holding Katara's hand.

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Awful? Less than awful? Tell me the truth and please let me know what you think, it means so much to me. Please R&R!

Also a quick shoutout to those who thought I'd quit: I haven't. I've just been feeling like no one wants to read it anyway, so why write it, and then I get distracted, and then blah blah blah, you know the drill. Irregardless, I didn't quit and so long as there is someone reading it, I won't. 3


	2. Chapter 2: Change

**I know that this theme is supposed to mean "change" as in "transformation", but I've never found the Zutara Week prompts too difficult or thought provoking so I like to play around with them, i.e. "change" as in "get naked". Enjoy.**

* * *

It had entirely been a misunderstanding.

He simply hadn't heard her when she left, and had been too engrossed in his own conversation to pay much attention. He had assumed she'd turned in early for the night, although of course in retrospect this was nonsensical; Katara had always seemed to be a night cat owl.

Suki and Sokka were the first to go, and no one really wanted to question them about it. Not long after the lovebirds had closed their tent, Aang and Toph were yawning as well. To be fair, Zuko had assumed she was asleep too, getting all the rest she could before the approaching comet.

He had gone to the water with entirely innocent intentions to bathe.

The moon had slid sheepishly behind a cloud, and darkness obscured much of the path. He cursed once stepping into a sharp bramble but otherwise the night was filled only with the rustle of grass and the soft hum of insects.

He was not trying to sneak anywhere, really, he just walked quietly—there had been too many years spent hunting and being hunted to break the habit. Plants grew thick along the sides of the river, nourished by the water, and the stream twisted in and out between rocks and land, obscuring most of it from view at any given point. He had been looking down, trying not to walk into anything else. He had always been cautious to check his surroundings before getting comfortable anywhere, but the Gaang was well-hidden deep in the woods, and the nearest town was quite a ways off.

He could hear the water moving gently, lapping against the riverbanks. Clothes discarded, he slipped into the chilly water to soak. The water warmed just slightly everywhere it touched his skin, and the night hummed on unaware of the uncomfortable situation unfolding in the water.

The moon cut through the heavy clouds and cast its light out into the night.

And it was then Zuko realized his mistake.

She was there in the water, on the other side, apparently just far enough to have not heard him join her. Her head was leaning back against the grass of the bank, body submerged, eyes closed. He froze. Of course she would be in the water. She was always in the water, stripped down to her white wraps, splashing around, twirling the water this way and that.

She had not noticed him yet, but she would definitely misunderstand him dropping silently into the water naked. He was caught, debating what to do. He could try and back out the way he had come, but if she caught him it would look far worse. He could get her attention and try and apologize. But he was still naked, and the place this was most concealed was in the water. She would not appreciate him flashing her, but she would likely not appreciate him mulling about in such a state so close to her either.

She sighed from across the water and he looked up, worried she had spotted him.

It was worse.

She seemed entirely in a world of her own, somewhere in her mind, eyes still closed. But more of her was floating in the water now, and she was not wearing the wraps Zuko had assumed she would be. The swell of her breasts broke the surface of the water.

Zuko looked away quickly, blush finding his cheeks and spreading fast. She was too naked, and she was too close to him. Moving comically slow, he pushed himself out of the water, keeping his eyes on her face (_her face, don't look anywhere else_). He picked his clothes up, mentally cursing even the quiet sound of the fabric moving. His heart was attempting to beat right out of his chest. How could he have been so silent getting there and every step seemed so noisy now?

When a tree obscured him from her view, he turned and fled rather ungracefully back to the campsite. He nearly fell over changing hurriedly back into his pants as fast as possible. He dropped onto his sleeping mat and closed the tent behind him. Now to try and remove that image of her that was burned into his mind.

Back at the river, Katara smiled to herself, hands trailing lazy patterns in the water. It wasn't fair to tease Zuko, but he made it too easy.

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**Hope that last bit doesn't feel too OOC; I think teasing!Katara is certainly in her, she just rarely lets it show.**

**Also, I usually write something and then rewrite it 3 times and stare at it for a week before I post it, but this was written and posted all tonight so I hope it's not too terrible. I wanted to put something up to prove I was still alive, and to say I'm almost finished with chapter 4 of _Healing and Hating_, which has been a long time coming but I'm excited. Please R&R, dears.**

**And shout out to _ArtemisandOrion_ who favorited and reviewed the last chapter on my birthday :)**


	3. Chapter 3: Pain

**I'm not too crazy about this one, I feel like it was almost something but I was trying really hard to stay on topic.**

**Anyway, these are happening because I'm still stuck on Chapter 4 of _Healing and Hating_ but I assure you that is still my main focus. I am just horrible at focus.**

* * *

Water was suddenly all around him. He knew Katara would come up behind him quickly to try and disarm him. Normally he would have moved to use her momentum to flip her, but with all he knew of her fighting style by now, she probably knew that too. Instead he tried something different. When he felt her close behind him, almost touching, he twisted so their backs were together. She swung once to this side, then to that side, but they remained back to back. He dodged her gracefully the way he'd seen the young airbender do a hundred times. On her third swing, she missed again and in the lapse he clapped her squarely between her shoulders. She stumbled forward face first but he caught the back of her tunic before she could hit the ground.

"You cheated," she accused, turning back to him. "That's Aang's move."

"I learned it from him," he shot a smile in the boy's direction off to the side. "But I didn't cheat."

She flicked water at him with a laugh and they were fighting again. He was focused intently on her hands in case she tried to knock him between the shoulders back, so he wasn't paying much attention to the position of her feet until she had knocked him over them.

He fell hard, with a loud "Unf—"

Sokka's laugh rung out in response and off to the side Toph clapped. Tripping was certainly not the most graceful way to go down when you were training hard to reach master bender status.

Dull pain leaked into his limbs—his back, his elbows. Fighting was different now that he was on the Avatar's side. It was more fun, and it felt better. It felt good, actually, even when it hurt.

Pain was a funny thing. Most people had such a poor opinion of it, tried their best to avoid it indiscriminately, and were miserable when it happened upon them. But to Zuko, pain was different. The feeling itself was uncomfortable, of course. But pain was more that that, and Zuko welcomed it.

Most tended to lump all the feelings into one, when really there was so much room in the spectrum to breathe, so much you could feel and call it all "pain". There were the easily apparent physical aspects: discomfort, aching, soreness, stinging, stabbing, throbbing. But pain was emotional and mental too: there was sorrow, grief, distress, heartache, heartbreak, desolation, misery, torment, despair. It was the kind of thing that could pin you down in your mind when you were fighting to ignore it, and keep you up long after the sun had gone down.

He had received so much of it over the years, and pain left its marks. Sometimes the bruises and scrapes—the scars—were on the outside, and sometimes they weren't so obvious.

He had grown to accept pain, and he had grown to appreciate how it worked. Pain made you focus, made you angry, made you strong. You had to learn by making mistakes, and the whole Gaang had made plenty of those along the way. You fell, you got up, you moved on.

You endured great pain because you had to earn your merit, your honor, your scars.

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**Not sure if there's enough plot there to justify so much inner monologuing but ah well. Ideas and feedback are always welcome.**


End file.
